Industrial carbon capture is a climate strategy environmentalists love to hate. Those committed to its development are trying to win back allies they sorely need.
Copy-pasting here my comment to this article from another community:
Carbon Capture and Storage/Sequestration (CCS) is a topic I changed my mind about, not that long ago, including its subsets like Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), Direct Air Capture (DAC), etc. Up to last year or something, I was thinking that it’s important for these kind of tech to be researched.
Now I see things differently:
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To my understanding, the only CCS tech that makes sense is the one that catches emissions at the source, the factory chimneys.
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The others that claim to suck up GHG and store them “out of sight out of mind” are highly problematic for so many reasons. They are distractions from the real issue which is phasing out fossil fuel.
A few relevant links:
Fact or fantasy? Can carbon dioxide removal save the climate?
For fossil fuel corporations, keeping CDR on the agenda as a credible climate change solution is a Get Out of Jail Free card. Instead of stopping emissions, they promise to capture and bury them. Not now, but someday. As the CEO of Occidental Petroleum told a conference of her peers in 2023, “We believe that our direct capture technology is going to be the technology that helps to preserve our industry over time. This gives our industry a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years that I think it’s going to be very much needed.”[
Climeworks’ capture fails to cover its own emissions
The carbon capture company Climeworks only captures a fraction of the CO2 it promises its machines can capture. The company is failing to carbon offset the emissions resulting from its operations – which have grown rapidly in recent years.
More articles in the relevant community:
cdr@slrpnk.net-
The climate collapse is so real, that anything must be tried. It is highly questionable that carbon capture will ever work, but can we risk NOT to do it? Go for it.
It’s fine for research, but there is no point scaling anything because it can’t work. The physics won’t allow you to capture carbon for less energy than you gained from it’s combustion. It’s fraudulent.
Edit:
anything must be tried
Like ending all fossil fuel use…
Well the only long term storage solution is effectively making blocks of coal. Which requires a bunch of energy via non-carbon sources.
The chemistry for carbon capture from the atmosphere is far less efficient than carbon capture at the source but turning off the sources is a much better solution.
That all being said, as long we as a society retains access to above an EROEI of 30, it is a viable option but below that; not a chance in hell.
